Toshiba packs 100 GB of storage in a 1.8-inch drive

Sign me up to buy! Toshiba just announced a giant 100 GB capacity hard drive in the diminutive 1.8-inch form factor. The dual-platter 4200 RPM drive increases capacity while keeping power down to 0.003W/GB; I'm not sure what that equates to when compared with other drives because I haven't see a "watts per Gigabyte" factor from Hitachi and others in this space.

We'll see the new drive, affectionately known as "MK1011GAH" at CES in four short weeks; aside from seeing the actual product, we'll be sure to ask what devices we can expect to see these in: notebooks, Tablets, UMPCs and digital audio players are usual suspects. Mass production starts next month as well, so before the snow thaws here in the Northern Hemi, you'll be sure to see the higher capacity in various products.

Comments

[Evan Easton]

Poifect for upgrading my eo i7210. I wasn't interested in voiding a warranty to upgrade from 60-80GB. But I very well might for a +40GB upgrade...that is if the price is right.

[jk]

It uses their perpendicular storage technology.

[John Christian]

The current Toshiba drives consume more power than the Hitachi drives, which is probably a reason for why you find Hitachi drives in Samsung Q1, but at the same time Toshiba drives are a bit faster than Hitachi. This new drive I am unsure about though.

Will be intersting to see if Samsung will release any 1.8" inch harddrives next year or if they have focused their efforts on the new SSD drives - which are brilliant if they just come down in price.

[John Christian]

A closer look at the specs, the new Toshiba uses 0.003 W/GB while the old MK8007GAH (80 GB) uses 0.00375 W/GB. Since the press release explicitly mentions this lower consuption we have to assume that its better than their previous drives. This should hopefully bring it at around Hitachi specs on power consuption but also faster. Interesting to see the first UMPC upgrades with this drive. :)